$400,000 Found in Warsaw Ghetto; Believed Sent to Jews Under Nazis

June 9, 1965

LONDON (Jun. 8)

A survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto expressed today the belief that a cache of $400,000, plus a large sum in American gold coins, found in a Warsaw ghetto cellar by a Pole, may have been part of the funds sent by overseas Jews to help save Polish Jewry under the Nazi occupation.

Michael Zylberberg, now representative in Britain for YIVO and the Yad Vashem, the Memorial Center in Israel for the Nazi Holocaust victims, cited the disclosure of the cache in a book by Leon Chain, a member of the first Polish Government in Lublin after the war, who is of Jewish descent.

The disclosure concerned the finding by the Pole in 1944 of a ghetto cellar full of American dollars. The Pole hid the find in the hope of returning to Warsaw after the war and retrieving the money. He did return, took the money and buried it in his garden. When police learned the Pole was using dollar bills, they searched his house and found $300,000 in bank notes. Another $100,000 was found in the cellar. In addition, a large sum in gold dollars was found.

There are several theories as to how the huge sum was hidden in a Warsaw cellar apparently during the war. Zylberberg told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he believed it was part of the money Jewish organizations abroad sent to Poland by various means to help the trapped Polish Jews. The Polish Government in Exile helped to remit these funds through their own underground channels but in any case, Mr. Zylberberg contended, it was Jewish money.